


Special Guys for a Special Guy

by leocastellano



Category: The Mindy Project
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-23
Updated: 2015-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-23 02:31:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4859675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leocastellano/pseuds/leocastellano
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How our favorite stuffed animals, Mr. Neck and Brown Bear, take up permanent residence in Leo Castellano's crib.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mr. Neck

Mindy doesn’t notice it right away. She recognizes the hole of space on the top of Danny’s dresser, but she can’t really place what used to be there, and frankly, she can’t be blamed as she’s only averaging a mere three hours of sleep these days. She has a high hope that the missing object is the cheap cologne of Danny’s she keeps throwing out that keeps reappearing, but she knows it isn’t, the putrid smells still haunts her. She can’t put her finger on what’s missing, but her life is great now, she has an amazing son and a great fiancé, so she decides it doesn’t really matter. So, naturally, it’s a week later when she finally figures what used to fill the empty space on Danny’s dresser, Mr. Neck.

It’s a Thursday night and Mindy has been up for twenty hours. Leo’s been sick all day; his little body clammy and feverish, his coughs and sneezes shaking his small frame, and his cries so loud and shrill that the intensity of their desperation halts his breathing for a second. He’s absolutely miserable, and that means Mindy and Danny are absolutely miserable. And so is Peter, who Mindy has called in a panic in twenty minute intervals from the moment Leo started to sneeze, and in these late night hours, even Peter, has nothing helpful to say in his distinctly perverted tone, so now, Danny and Mindy are own their own.

Mindy wakes up to his cries for the tenth time that night and she wishes that she could do something more for her son because he’s in so much pain and she’s in so much pain watching him be in pain. Mindy made the observation about motherhood pretty quickly that the absolute worst thing about motherhood was that there is no way to ensure that her child will be fabulously happy all the time, and that children just don’t stick to the plans, even if they are well-laid and almost perfect as if Nora Ephron herself wrote them. As the cries permeate their room once again, Mindy groggily sits up in bed and clumsily slides her glasses onto her face; but, as she makes a move to get out of bed, Danny’s hand latches onto her shoulder. “It’s okay, I’ve got this,” he says to her. She smiles back at him sleepily, in a way that doesn’t quite reach her eyes, as he swings out of bed and shuffles towards the nursery.

Mindy lies back in bed, no longer focused on sleeping, but only on the sound of her son’s wailing. While it was quite noble and considerate of Danny to take Leo, and she totally deserved the sleep he was offering her, she just couldn’t take it. She needed to be with the baby right now, sleeping was nowhere near a priority. So as Leo’s cries begin to quiet little by little, she slips out bed, shrugs on her robe, and tiptoes across the hall. Leo’s cries have died down from hysterical retches to subdued whimpers, and in an effort not disturb the calming scene, she peers through the crack in the door.

Danny’s rocking Leo in his arms, pacing around the room, in what can only be described as a dance, the movement’s graceful with an oddly comforting sway that’s almost mesmerizing. As she watches him, a small smile dances across her lips and she folds her arms, resigning herself to stand back and watch her two favorite guys. It’s when Danny turns in her direction that she sees it, what’s been missing from the dresser, it’s Mr. Neck. Mr. Neck is balancing on top of her son’s small body, Leo’s finger clutching the giraffe’s neck precariously and one of the giraffe’s little nob-shaped ears suckled in his mouth.

When Leo’s whimpers cease, Danny’s whole body sags with relief and he looks up with a small lopsided smile on his face. Their eyes meet instantly, momentarily shocked, his smile deepens at the sight of Mindy’s face and the sounds his son’s congested snores.

“Hey,” he whispers. Mindy quietly makes her way into the nursery.

“Hey,” she smiles back, “That’s a cute little guy Leo’s got with him there.”

And maybe it’s because the rules of masculinity don’t apply in a nursery, or maybe it’s because nothing’s embarrassing at 1:35 on a Thursday morning while rocking your sick infant to sleep, or maybe it's because Danny’s the best father on Earth (Mindy thinks it’s the latter), but Danny isn’t embarrassed like he normally would be by the presence of Mr. Neck. “Yeah,” Danny responds, “This little guy was always watching over me when I was sick, and you know, I just figured he could watch over my little guy.”

Mindy steps forward and places her hand on Danny’s shoulder, “That’s so sweet,” she coos, “I love it.”

Danny smirks as he whispers his response, “Plus, Mr. Neck is the best-stuffed animal in the house and Leo deserves the best.”

Mindy takes her hand off his shoulder, she whispers offended, “How dare you? Brown Bear is clearly the most loyal, most sophisticated, most well-dressed, and best secret keeping stuffed animal in this house.”

Danny winks and retorts back, “Well that’s your opinion, isn’t it? But I think Leo agrees with me.”

Mindy gasps in mock horror, “Danny Castellano, how dare you use our beautiful, innocent, mixed race son, who clearly takes after me, in an argument against me?”

“Oh please, you use him to get what you want all the time, just the other day when you didn’t want to watch Ken Burn’s new film, you said I couldn’t watch it either because you didn’t want me to make our son a nerd.”

“I stand by that statement,” Mindy huffs quietly, and Danny shakes his head at lets up a breathy laugh, because everything is funny at 1:37 on a Thursday morning.

And that’s when Leo squirms, and from the once joyful banter of the room emerges a panicked quiet. Danny grips Leo to his chest a little tighter and Mindy stretches out her hand and runs her fingers over Leo’s tiny knuckles. Leo grips her finger lightly as he eases back into a slumber that Mindy and Danny both know will end sooner than later.

When Leo’s snores even, Mindy lets go of his hand and kisses his cheek and breathes an “I love you” into his skin, and then Danny lays him gently into his crib, moving Mr. Neck off the baby’s chest and in the upper right corner. “Watching over him,” Danny explains, as he straightens up and takes Mindy’s hand and they tiptoe across the hall to their bedroom. And as for Mr. Neck, he stays in that corner of the crib, and when the crib becomes a big boy bed, he stays there too, and he doesn’t leave Leo’s room again until Danny sneaks him into one of Leo’s boxes as he packs up his son’s things for college.

 

            


	2. Brown Bear

Danny notices it right away, how could he not? Mindy’s little Brown Bear had been sitting on her nightstand, bearing its button eyes into his every move for the past year. Its glassy button eyes were gone, and Danny wasn’t sure if he was pleased or dejected by the development. It was early on a Thursday morning, and Danny was even more shocked to see that Mindy was already up and out of bed, something that is always deeply unsettling. It is something that he would have thought, before Leo’s birth, to be an entirely mythical concept. He slips out of bed and shrugs on a pink t-shirt, he can’t believe he’s wearing a pink shirt either. Well, actually, he can, Mindy gave away all his “boring” shirts, which apparently meant every single shirt he owned that wasn’t colored like a teenage girl’s locker décor. Not that Danny had paid any attention to the locker décor of teenage girls.

He opens the door to a complete and utter disaster zone. There are toys of all types strewn over the furniture and he registers the churning of a bottle warming from the kitchen. He hears the tune of music from Leo’s play mat, and he sees his young son surrounded by every single stuffed animal in the house as he comfortably squirms around on his blanket with Mindy cuddled up next to him. And it is as he is assessing the scene before him, that Danny begins to understand all the mysteries surrounding him, Leo’s spending the day with his nanny and Mindy is trying to compensate. It’s only Leo’s second week with a nanny, but from his limited understanding, it had not been going well. Well, it had been going pretty well for little Leo, but not so well for Mindy.

Mindy has been a complete and utter nervous wreck since going back to work the other week, she’s been feverishly calling their nanny, Skylar, so many times that Danny has confiscated her phone during work hours. Mindy’s also been bursting into his office multiple times every day, hands wringing in worry, begging, just begging, for Danny to give her the phone so she could call Skylar one more time. And it’s his job to calm her, despite his own worries. He hugs and sits her down in the chair and reminds her that if she calls again, Skylar will probably quit. He is usually able to successfully calm her for approximately an hour before they do it all over again.

Looking on at the scene before him, Danny decides it’s best not to intrude. He tries to sneak into the kitchen, but Mindy catches a glimpse of him. “Hey babe,” she says, chipper, “Can you get the bottle out of the bottle warmer?” He smiles brightly and nods, making his way to the kitchen, where he catches a look at the clock, and his heart sinks. Mindy looks so happy just playing with Leo, and now, he’s going to have to tell her it’s time to get ready for work. But when he walks backs into the room and sees the way Leo giggles every time Mindy makes Brown Bear play peek-a-boo, he doesn’t have the heart to say anything just yet, so instead he hands Mindy the bottle, places a kiss on both her and Leo’s foreheads, and sits down next to them. He settles into the pattern of their game pretty quickly, and Mindy even lets Danny get a few giggles out of Leo before she gives him the bottle. The silence in the room is only broken by Leo’s adorable, little gurgles; and Danny sits there with what he knows is a dopey-looking smile, just looking at him.

It’s Mindy that breaks the silence. “Don’t say it, I already know okay.” He looks up from Leo’s chubby cheeks and looks her directly in the eyes, where he sees tears forming. He places his hand on top of hers, which are cradling the baby tightly to her chest, and he responds, “Okay.” Mindy lets out a sigh and continues, “I know we have to get ready for work and leave soon, but I just can’t. I can’t think about that right now. I just need two more minutes, two more minutes to just be here with our son, okay?” Her eyes are pleading and Danny’s look matches hers. “Okay,” he whispers, twining all three of their fingers, Leo’s little fist in the middle of their hands. And so they take two minutes, and then they maybe indulge themselves in ten more after that.

Then, with all their minutes over, and Mindy hands Leo to Danny and goes to shower. Mindy always showers first in the morning because, “It’s much more exclusive and all the randos and super old people showering after you have to deal with how much hot water you left and have to shower really quick. It’s basically like being God. “ When she’d told him that the day after she first slept over, his only response had been, “I’m neither super old nor random.” To which she had replied, “Danny, you’re the oldest person I know.” She then proceeded to push him out of the bathroom, lock the door, and take a 47-minute shower. Translation: He would never shower first again. Which he thinks now, is very much in his favor, as he gets a solid 47 minutes of Leo to himself. It’s special Daddy and Leo time, and it’s the best part of every morning. Danny likes to spend the time doing some very manly cuddling and imparting all his wisdom and stories to Leo. Danny knows Mindy doesn’t want “Leo to be a nerd”, but knowledge of all the state’s capitals and all the Presidents and Mayors of New York are essential, and if that makes Leo a nerd, Leo’s going to be a nerd.

When Mindy’s done getting ready, it’s Danny’s turn, and like every morning, it’s so hard to give Leo over to Mindy and get ready for work. As he shaves, he hears Mindy let Skylar inside and he hears them quietly collaborate in preparing Leo’s schedule for the day. Dressed up for work, he emerges into the great room, where he sees Skylar organizing Leo’s toys on the shelves, she looks up and he enters, catches his eye and mouths to him, “Give her a minute.” He nods, breaking their shared and knowing glance, and looks over to Mindy.

Mindy has Leo propped up on her lap and she has Brown Bear in one hand, and her soft coos are barely audible, but Danny is able to make them out, just barely. “Hey little guy,” she whispers to Leo, “Mommy and Daddy have to go to work, and we don’t want to leave you here, but you wouldn’t like it there anyway, Jeremy’s there and Morgan’s always being, like, super loud. You wouldn’t even get to nap, and I know that’s your favorite thing in the world besides me. But I do have someone special for you, Brown Bear. Brown Bear used to be my special guy, but now you’re my special guy, so I figure that you should be together when I can’t be with you.” She places Brown Bear’s paw into Leo’s hand, and he grabs for the animal, sticking the paw in his mouth. Mindy laughs lightly, presses a kiss against his forehead, and she breathes an “I love you” to him.

And Danny is floored by her, floored by how much he loves her, and floored by how much he loves their son. He will never not be floored by how much he loves them, his family. Mindy and his eyes meet, “You ready to go?” she asks. He nods in the affirmative, and her responding smile is contagious and strides over to the couch where he swings Leo into his arms for a goodbye kiss. They hand their gorgeous, model-status, perfect mixed race son to Skylar, link hands, and walk to the elevator. And Danny has a feeling that with Brown Bear in Leo’s hand, Mindy may actually make it through the day without calling Skylar until after lunch. And Danny has a feeling that Brown Bear will never be perched on the nightstand again. 

 

           


End file.
